Call for Proposals
2012 AAAI Fall Symposium Series
November 2–4, 2012
n
Washington, DC
Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
AAAI invites proposals for the 2012 Fall Symposium Series, to be held
Friday through Sunday, November 2–4 at the Westin Arlington Gateway
in Arlington, Virginia adjacent to Washington, DC. The Fall Symposium Series provides the AI community with a unique venue in which
researchers from different areas of AI can:
•
•
•
•
Present speculative work and work in progress
Hold focused discussions over several days
Build new communities for emerging disciplines
Build ties between existing disciplines
The series brings together a set of two and one-half day symposia at a
common site, providing a unique and intimate forum for colleagues in a
given discipline. The series also provides an important gathering point
for the AI community as a whole. Efforts are made to keep registration
and lodging costs low so that graduate students can afford to attend. The
series is designed to minimize the administrative burden on the organizing committees of the individual symposia. AAAI manages registration and local arrangements, and provides organizational support, publicity within the AAAI community, and publication of working notes for
distribution within the symposium and (optionally) the community at
large.
The series runs twice yearly (spring and fall). Approximately eight
symposium topics will be selected for the 2012 Fall Symposium Series.
Accepted proposals will be distributed as widely as possible over the
subfields of AI, and balanced between theoretical and applied topics.
Symposia bridging theory and practice and those combining AI and
related fields are particularly solicited.
Proposals for symposia should be between two and five pages in
length, and should contain:
• A title for the symposium.
• A description of the symposium, identifying specific areas of interest, and,
optionally, general symposium format. The symposia are intended to encourage presentation of speculative work and work in progress, as well as completed work. Therefore, ample time should be scheduled for discussion. Novel programming, including the use of target problems, open-format panels, working
groups, or breakout sessions, is encouraged.
• The names and (physical and electronic) addresses of the organizing committee, preferably three or more people at different sites, all of whom have agreed
to serve on the committee.
• A list of potential participants who have been contacted and who have
expressed interest in participating. A common way of gathering potential participants is to send email messages to email lists related to the topic(s) of the
symposium. Note that potential participants need not commit to participating,
only state that they are interested.
Ideally, the entire organizing committee should collaborate in producing the proposal. If possible, a draft proposal should be sent out to a
few of the potential participants and their comments solicited.
Proposals will be reviewed by the Symposium Series Standing Committee (Chair: Matthew Taylor, Lafayette College; Cochair: Gita Suk-
thankar, University of Central Florida; and Associate Chair: Alan
Schultz, Naval Research Laboratory).
The criteria for acceptance of proposals include the following:
Perceived interest to the AAAI community. Although AAAI encourages symposia that cross disciplinary boundaries, a symposium must be
of interest to some community within the AAAI membership. Symposia
that are of interest to a broad range of AAAI members are, of course,
also encouraged.
Expected size. Although the series supports a range of symposium
sizes (roughly 25-75), the target size is around 40 participants.
Lack of established venues on the topic. The AAAI Symposium Series
is intended to nurture emerging communities and topics, so topics that
already have yearly conferences or workshops are inappropriate.
Qualifications of the organizing committee. The organizing committee
should have (1) a good technical knowledge of the topic, (2) good organizational skills, and (3) connections to the various communities from
which they intend to draw participants. Committees for cross-disciplinary symposia should adequately represent the disciplines to be covered by the symposium.
Symposium proposals should be submitted as soon as possible, but
no later than February 3, 2012. Proposals that are submitted significantly before this deadline can be in draft form. Comments on how to
improve and complete the proposal will be returned to the submitter in
time for revisions to be made before the deadline. Notifications of
acceptance or rejection will be sent to submitters around February 24,
2012.
The submitters of accepted proposals will become the chairs of the
symposium, unless alternative arrangements are made. Symposium
organizing committees are responsible for:
• Writing short calls for participation and registration, which AAAI will distribute to its membership
• Additional publicity of the symposium, especially to potential audiences from
outside the AAAI community
• Reviewing requests to participate in the symposium and determining symposium participants
• Collecting submissions for the symposium technical reports from the selected
participants
• Scheduling the activities of the symposium
• Preparing a short review of the symposium, to be printed in AI Magazine.
Please submit (preferably by electronic mail) your symposium proposals, and inquiries concerning symposia, to:
Matthew Taylor
Lafayette College
Easton, Pennsylvania
taylorm@lafayette.edu